A wave of uncertainty washed over me recently. Is our marketing team working on the right things? If we halt all our current projects, would our KPIs nose-dive? I feared not. Then I started seeing a trend in our weekly standup meetings: everyone was being productive, but no one was focused directly on our North Star metric. GAH! How’d that happen? There’s a simple explanation: without focus and structure, important loses the daily battle with urgent. We casually abandoned our system for setting ambitious, measurable goals and staying accountable. I took my hands off the wheel because we were generally doing a fantastic job growing the business. But growth is a game of inches. What are we leaving on the table by putting the team on cruise control? Would more thoughtful direction yield 2X the results? 20X? 200X? “You’re smart, go do great work!” isn’t direction. It isn’t teamwork. It’s the approach you take when you get too busy to steer the ship. It’s scattershot. And that’s one hundred percent on me.